


Only Connection

by reeby10



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: hptimetravel, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Time Travel, this is incredibly self indulgent and I'm not sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 06:29:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11777397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/pseuds/reeby10
Summary: One night, a young Tom Riddle appears in Harry’s flat, and Harry knows he has to figure out how to send him back. As time passes and they get to know each other, though, it becomes harder to convince himself that sending Tom back to the past is what either of them really wants.





	Only Connection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leontina (Leontina)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leontina/gifts).



> Originally posted [here](http://hptimetravel.livejournal.com/17805.html) for HP Time Travel Fest 2016.

Harry jerked awake at a strange sound. He looked around his dark bedroom, bleary eyes squinted to try to see anything out of place. It looked fine, but a lifetime of having to be aware of danger had him on edge. Whatever the sound was, it didn’t belong in his flat.

He put on his glasses, grabbing his wand from the bedside table and slipping his feet into a pair of comfy, worn house shoes before he quietly shuffled across the room. The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he peered around the doorway. The rest of the flat looked fine, nothing out of place in the early morning darkness, but still, something felt off.

There was suddenly another sound, softer than before, like the quiet slide of feet on hardwood. Someone else was there somewhere, someone that shouldn’t be there. Harry prepared himself to attack and crept further into the room.

Between one blink and another, there was a wand pointed straight in his face. Harry started back, almost tripping on his own feet as he tried to get his wand back up to protect himself. Whoever was in his flat was obviously a wizard, and he’d learned very well over the years that there were many of them who would not hesitate to try and kill him.

“Who are you?”

The voice was so familiar that Harry almost fell back again, blood running icy through his veins. That was a voice he’d never thought he’d hear again, not when he himself had been the one to kill the speaker just a year before.

He looked up to see not Voldemort, but a much younger Tom Riddle. Somehow, he looked around the same age as Harry and was dressed in black robes with a rather old fashioned cut. It was startling, and more than a little mortifying, to realize he was even more attractive than Harry’s memories of him from second year, when he met the shade of the fifteen year old Tom.

“Who are you?” Tom repeated, face going hard. He gestured with his wand, sparks playing dangerously around the tip of it. “Where am I?”

“Where are you?” Harry asked, head cocked. He was distracted enough by the question to ignore the first for now, but it was probably better to put that off anyway, just in case that meant Tom would attack him more forcefully. “What do you mean? I mean, _you_ got into _my_ flat in the middle of the night.”

Tom stared at him for a long moment, wand not wavering as he seemed to be considering Harry’s words. “Is this London?” he asked slowly, then glanced around the flat. Harry wasn’t sure how he could see anything in the dark, but there was apparently something there that made an impression because he frowned. “What is the date?”

“Yes, this is London,” Harry replied. “And it’s the twelfth of July 1999. Or well, I suppose it’s the thirteenth now.”

For a moment Harry thought Tom might attack him, from the look on his face, then it morphed into something closer to excitement. “This is the future?” Tom breathed out, like he was talking more to himself than anything.

“Er, I guess so? How… how old are you?” Harry asked, wondering how much he should be worrying about the man in front of him. There was a certain level of vigilance he needed to maintain no matter what, but he knew there was a point where Tom had really turned irreparably to the dark side. He just hoped this was before that.

“ _Not_ that it’s any of your business, but I am eighteen years old. I just graduated from Hogwarts,” Tom said, sounding every bit the prissy Slytherin Harry remembered from meeting his younger self. He peered at Harry, one eyebrow raised condescendingly as he noticed his rather ratty sleepwear. “You did go to Hogwarts, didn’t you?”

Harry wasn’t sure how to feel about the two of them being the same age, for some reason that made this bizarre situation all the more real and immediate. More pressingly, he needed to find out how Tom had gotten here and how to send him back. Usually he would get Hermione’s help for something like this, but memories of the Battle of Hogwarts were still far too near for much of the wizarding world. It would be better to keep this quiet for now, which meant figuring it out on his own.

“I did,” he finally answered, seeing that Tom was beginning to look a bit put off by the lack of response. “Just graduated myself. Well, sort of, it's complicated. Uh, I don't suppose you know how you got here?”

Tom shook his head, looking a little sour. “I was doing a little cleaning at the shop,” he said. “Borgin and Burkes, I suppose it's still around? Anyway, I must have touched something because the next thing I knew I was in your living room.”

“Some Dark object then, great,” Harry muttered. He should have known it was something like that with the two of them being who they were. Life never worked out in his favor it seemed, and if he was more sympathetic to Tom, he’d say the same about him.

“Probably,” Tom replied with a lazy shrug, though there was a gleam of interest in his eyes. He doubtless didn't care about being affected by some Dark magic, but anyone who has known him in school had remarked on how intelligent and curious he was. “There are a great many strange things hidden in that shop, though this is one of the most interesting I've encountered. Few things will allow a wizard to travel through time, especially decades.”

“Yeah, I’d already pretty much ruled out time turners,” Harry said, sighing. It would have been too much to ask for it to be something he’d encountered before, of course. “Might have been some more powerful things in the Department of Mysteries, but I think most of that got destroyed.”

“How do you know that?”

Harry shrugged, a little uncomfortable with the reminder of what has happened at the Ministry even if he’d been the one to bring it up. “It's a long story,” he said shortly. Tom looked ready to press for details, but it wasn't really something Harry wanted to talk about, especially with him of all people.

“It doesn't matter now,” he continued before Tom could open his mouth. “Now we just need to figure out how to send you back.”

***

To Harry’s surprise, Tom was not a bad houseguest in the following days. He was clean and fairly quiet and very polite. He also, to Harry’s dismay, had a wicked sense of humor and was a very good conversationalist. If they weren’t both who they were, Harry knew he’d be in trouble. Even still, it became harder every day to remember that this attractive man sleeping in his spare bedroom was just a younger version of the Dark Lord he’d defeated a year ago.

They spent the next few days poring over every book on time travel Harry could get his hands on. The flat wasn’t far from Diagonal Alley, so a few hours after Tom first appeared, Harry made a run to the book shop. He was a little worried about leaving the man in his flat, more about him wandering off into the wider wizarding, or muggle, world than anything else, but thankfully everything seemed fine when he returned.

Tom’s only complaint was that the books he’d gotten leaned far too much to the Light to be of much use. It was a thought Harry had entertained when he bought the books, but he wasn’t quite up to venturing into Nocturn Alley or elsewhere quite yet. He just had to hope that they’d find their answer before that became the only option.

As their days began to fall into a pattern of eating together at meals, researching for most of the day, and talking in the evenings, Harry saw his feelings about Tom slowly change. It wasn’t until Tom had been there a full week that he really realized, and even then he wasn’t sure what to think of the change.

Part of it was the novelty of having someone else in his space so constantly. After the Battle of Hogwarts, he had gone to live with the Weasleys for a time, but it quickly became apparent to him that they all needed a little more space. The Weasleys would have welcomed him indefinitely, he knew, but it felt intrusive of him to be there when they needed time to grieve and pull their family back together. He bought his own flat in muggle London, a ten minute walk from the entrance to Diagon Alley, just two months later.

They had all been to visit him since there since, as had Hermione and Neville and Luna. Life, though, moved on. Hogwarts reopened and some in his year, like Hermione, returned to finish out their education. Others got jobs with the newly reorganized Ministry or took some time off to travel or otherwise returned to life as normally as possible.

After the first few months, everyone was busy and the visits to his flat had trickled to once or twice a month. Harry didn’t mind so much at first since it gave him some time to reevaluate his own life and figure out what he wanted to do. The only problem was that he didn’t really _know_ what he wanted to do. Truth be told, before Tom showed up he’d settled into a routine of doing nothing that was neither fun nor, probably, healthy.

With Tom there though, well, things had changed. For the first time in a long time, he felt energized and interested in life. It would have been nice for that catalyst to be a friend or romantic interest instead of an enemy from the past, but at least it was something.

“-and that sounds a little like…” Harry trailed off in the middle of the explanation about the cursed object he’d found in one of the books he was looking at, frowning at the man in front of him. “Tom, are you even listening to me?”

“Of course, Harry, I always listen to you,” Tom replied, not looking away from the window. He’d been staring onto the street outside for the past several minutes, eyes distant like he was thinking of something entirely different than the discussion Harry was trying to have.

“Uh huh. It sure doesn’t feel like it at the moment,” Harry said, trying not to sound as petulant as he was feeling. “What are you looking at?”

“The outside. I haven’t been out of the flat since I got here and I guess I’m just feeling a little claustrophobic,” Tom answered, finally looking over at Harry. There was something a little wistful in his eyes, Harry thought. “It’s so different out there than what I remember of London.”

Harry’s frown deepened and he carefully bookmarked the page he’d been looking at. “Why does it matter? Once you’re home, this will be decades in the future.”

Tom hummed, turning to look back out the window without answering. Harry stared at him. In the week and a half that Tom had been there, he’d never talked so little. Even the first few days, when they’d been especially wary of each other, Tom had been charming and never passed up a chance to discuss something from the books Harry bought. It was strange to seem him like this and, with a start, Harry realized he was worried about the other man.

“Tom, are you… don’t you want to go home?”

“Does it matter?” Tom replied, voice strangely quiet. He turned to look back at Harry, eyes dark and heavy with something Harry was a little afraid to consider. If he thought about it, Harry knew he’d be lost. “You are my only connection to this time, and you want me to go back.”

***

Harry thought about the conversation almost constantly for the next several days. His kneejerk response had been that of course he wanted Tom to go back, who would want a budding Dark Lord living in their spare bedroom? But of course Tom didn’t know anything about that. Harry had been carefully silent on anything involving that part of history, which had ended up being a bit difficult since the wizarding world had been so consumed by him for so many years.

He’d managed to avoid airing that thought and changed the topic, but the question still haunted him. Worse, his _answer_ haunted him. The more he thought about it and the more time he spent with Tom, the less sure he was that he actually wanted Tom to go back.

It was… nice having him around, having someone to talk to and come home to after running errands. Something inside of him, some selfish part deep inside, wanted things to go on as they were now. For the first time in a long time, Harry really felt happy, and Tom was a big part of that.

But there were so many problems with that. Tom wouldn’t stay cooped up in the flat forever, and eventually Harry’s friends would call on him again. Someone was bound to ask questions soon or later and Ginny, at the very least, would recognize him immediately. They, the wizarding world and all, had gone through so much and he didn’t want to cause a panic with accidentally letting on that there was a younger and potentially even more dangerous Dark Lord staying in the Chosen One’s flat.

And that wasn’t even taking into account his far more personal feelings on the matter. He’d been avoiding thinking about it since long before that conversation, but there was really no way he could avoid it now. That same selfish part of him wanted Tom not only as a companion, but as something more.

Even as a scared little twelve year old, Harry had seen how attractive Tom was. Now, with them the same age and no immediate danger, the attraction was infinitely worse. He’d thought actually getting to know Tom would diminish things, but despite their intrinsic differences in viewpoints, he couldn’t help but fall even deeper. He’d had crushes before, and a thing with Ginny that had been burnt out far too quickly by the war, but this was different.

It was full of things dark and dangerous and Harry couldn’t help but crave it even more.

Despite thinking about it so much, though, Harry wasn’t sure what Tom’s thoughts on the subject were. He was fairly certain after their conversation that Tom didn’t want to return to his own time, but that didn’t answer the question of why. He hesitated to name himself as the reason, but he honestly couldn’t think of another explanation.

Tom hadn’t had any other interactions with the future, discounting the way he liked to stare out the windows and the books he’d read since he arrived. The answer could have been as simple as curiosity or novelty, but somehow Harry didn’t think that was the case. But he also wasn’t sure he was ready to consider that Tom wanted to stay for the same reasons that Harry wanted him to.

As the days continued to pass with the same tension that had been left at the end of their conversation, Harry decided it was time to meet the problem head on. It was his birthday the next day and the Weasley’s had already told him that they expected him at the Burrow to celebrate. That would mean leaving Tom alone at the flat for far longer than ever before, so he thought it was best to have that discussion sooner rather than later, lest things take a turn for the worse.

“Tom, do you have a moment?” Harry asked, peeking around the doorframe of Tom’s bedroom. He’d started thinking of it as Tom’s room instead of the spare without even noticing, which probably should have given him a clue much sooner.

Tom nodded from his position seated cross legged on the bed and set the book he’d been reading to the side. “What is it?” he asked, frowning as he apparently saw something worrying on Harry’s face.

Harry stepped into the room, sitting on the bed a foot away from Tom. He was all too conscious of the distance between them, and wondered for a moment if Tom was as well.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day. Or rather, what you didn’t say, I guess,” he began, far more nervous about this than he’d been about anything in quite a long time. There was so much at stake here and it almost felt like one of those possibly world ending confrontations all over again. “That you don’t want to go back to your own time.”

“Ah,” Tom replied. He shook his head, looking almost sad, and Harry had the almost overwhelming urge to lean across the space between them and comfort him. “Like I said then, I don’t have any connections here and you want me to go. It’s my only choice, really.”

“What if… what if I didn’t want you to go?” Harry asked, heart beating so hard he could hear it echoing in his ears. “What if I wanted you to stay?”

Tom was silent for a long time, his face giving nothing away. For a wild moment, Harry wanted to take it all back, but he knew he couldn’t. He’d put himself out on the line and he needed to wait for Tom to take up the implicit offer, or to reject it. All he could do was sit and wait and let Tom work through whatever thoughts were going through his head.

“You want me here?”

Harry was nodding almost before he’d processed that Tom was finally responding. “I do,” he said, trying to hide the way his voice was threatening to crack on the words. “I don’t want you to go back, I want you to stay here with me.”

“Thank you,” Tom said softly, dark eyes full of something like hope. It warned Harry from the inside out to think that he’d put that there.

“You’re welcome,” Harry responded, and on impulse he leaned forward to kiss Tom.

The thought had barely gone through his head that he hoped he hadn’t ruined everything when Tom responded, leaning into the kiss and moving his hands up to cup Harry’s cheeks. The kisses stayed light, almost tentative, but Harry thought it was the best thing he’d ever experienced. After a few minutes, they pulled apart far enough to lean their foreheads together, smiles breaking out across their faces as they caught their breath.

“Are you sure about this?” Tom asked, hands dropping down to grasp Harry’s. He didn’t sound anything like his usual confident self, but then again, he was agreeing to start a new life with no past in a world he didn’t fit into yet.

“We’ll work it out,” Harry assured, thinking almost guiltily of the many things he’d avoided telling Tom the past few weeks.

Now wasn’t the time to bring them up, not with this thing between them so fresh and new, but someday he would. Tom deserved to know, and they would have a lot of things to work out from there. It would take a lot of work and a lot of trust, but they’d figure it out. And then they’d figure out how to tell the others, especially Ginny.

Someday, Harry wanted to be able to bring him to meet his friends and family.

**Author's Note:**

> Concrit welcome. If you like my fic, feel free to come hit me up [on tumblr](http://voldiebuns.tumblr.com/)!


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